Words, concepts and referents - Derren Brown

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Words, concepts and referents - Derren Brown

Here are 3 videos of Derren Brown that strike dead center in the issue of words, concepts and referents. Unfortunately embedding has been disabled by YouTube for all three videos, but the links work fine.

In the first example, Brown shows how concepts receive subliminal referents to the great surprise of some slick advertising dudes:

Derren Brown - Subliminal Advertising

One of the most important issues in concept formation, one that Rand did not deal with but instead took for granted, is actual memory of referents. Here is an example where both memory and the normative part in the concept "gift" were manipulated in a guest on Brown's show by manipulating subliminal referents in parallel to the concept.

Now here is a particularly sneaky manner of how to use the different definitions of words as a flip-flop referent. In higher concepts, a word and/or concept serves as a sort of virtual referent for a new concept. When you mix them with the intent to deceive, they are quite effective. In fact, this video deals with concrete situations, but this flip-flop of meaning happens all the time in online Objectivist/libertarian discussions, at least in many I have read and participated in.

Enjoy the videos. If you are not familiar with this stuff, it is an eye-opener.

I know that I recently came across a film that had an advertising person who impressed me:

I just saw a 90 Frontline film called The Persuaders. It's about advertising, but one person who was interviewed really caught my attention: Clotaire Rapaille.

His theory is that certain words (and concepts, from what I have been able to discern) come with an emotional impact when we first encounter them and this impact never goes away. He calls this the "reptilian code" (meaning the understanding and associations working in the reptilian part of the human brain).

So when we encounter this word or concept in reality, we filter perception of it according to a template (he calls it archetype) learned in our infancy. Once we act on that knowledge in society, it becomes a cultural archetype.

When I think of taking the insights of Clotaire Rapaille and adding them to the NLP techniques Derren Brown, I see a very powerful union that would need more than just a good idea to penetrate.

If anyone is interested in trying to figure out how philosophy influences large groups of people in practical terms, the actual mechanism, and why people can hear a good idea and even agree with it, but still adhere to irrational traditions, I have no doubt that the answer is on this path.

Michael

[thomtg]

[...]

Here are 3 videos of Derren Brown that strike dead center in the issue of words, concepts and referents. Unfortunately embedding has been disabled by YouTube for all three videos, but the links work fine.

[...]

When I think of taking the insights of Clotaire Rapaille and adding them to the NLP techniques Derren Brown, I see a very powerful union that would need more than just a good idea to penetrate.

If anyone is interested in trying to figure out how philosophy influences large groups of people in practical terms, the actual mechanism, and why people can hear a good idea and even agree with it, but still adhere to irrational traditions, I have no doubt that the answer is on this path.

Michael

I just saw the three short videos. (The fourth is too long to search for the particulars.) I am skeptical of all three as representative of whatever theory Derren Brown tries to illustrate.

In the first and second videos, we are not told how many subjects he had videotaped before he chose the ones he now presents to us. In the third, he includes one of three subjects who wasn't duped by his verbal sleights. I'll grant that the tricks he does may work on those lulled into a state of non-alert or distraction, but that is all I can draw from what is shown.

If there is a moral to the anecdotal evidence, it is that one's level of focus is key to one's thriving in life, especially in civil society.

Edited June 19, 2009 by Thom T G

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Thom,

You missed the point, but you did mention focus, which is integral to a discussion on subliminal influences.

My point was not to entertain or prove Derren Brown's credentials or that we are puppets or anything like that. I was looking at how referents and concepts interplay on a subliminal level, to the point of tricking volition so to speak, and how words are the joker in the pack.

My point about Rapaille is that if you can wed the subliminal interplay displayed by Brown's show to the deep subconscious premise-level centralizing values like Rapaille uncovers, you have a devastatingly powerful weapon of persuasion. But then so do people who think differently than you do.

From what I see from right here in the middle of the Information Age, the choice is to learn this stuff or be subject to it. Our society does not offer a third option.

Since you are a person seriously into epistemology, I believe your studies would be greatly enriched by becoming familiar with the theories advertising and marketing are based on. Although proof in this field is usually given in measured behavior and spending patterns, or entertainment shows like Brown's, not often brain scans and stuff like that, and certainly not in pouring over ancient philosophy texts and modern academic ones, this is not just sitting in a room and making an opinion up out of thin air.

Billions of dollars run on this stuff every day. If examining theories of knowledge is your interest, and your interest extends to both cognitive and normative abstractions, this is well-worth looking at.

You learn why most people most of the time buy the sizzle instead of the bacon. That works on an academic level, too.

Michael

[Christopher]

Really nice videos. This guy is amazing.

There are whole other levels of communication going on between and around people all the time. That is one thing I am sure of. Take logical analysis: analysis is a discussion approach, but it is not necessarily persuasive, it is not necessarily comforting. Speaking "logical analysis" is an action, not necessarily even the most clear way of communicating. How much communication are we unaware of that goes on?